How Millions of Jackfruit Are Harvested & Processed – Amazing Thai Food Farming For Jackfruit Snack

This is common milkweed. In Latin, it is known as Asclepias syriaca. If you tear one of its leaves, petioles, or break its stalk, you will immediately understand where milkweed derives its name from. As you can see, common milkweed is full of milky sap that readily drips from any injury on the plant. Now before I go any further, I want to caution you. Common milkweed is mildly toxic and therefore cannot be eaten raw. However, the toxin can be neutralized through boiling. This is good news because common milkweed is a tasty and nutritious plant when properly prepared. The United States Department of Agriculture has identified 76 species of milkweed that grow in the U.S. alone. However, common milkweed is the only species that is considered safe to eat, after being properly boiled of course. Other species are not. Even if the common milkweed is a plant that you only wish to admire rather than eat, it is still a good idea to familiarize yourself with it. You never know when such knowledge might come in handy. The more you know about the wild edibles around you, the better. If you are a butterfly enthusiast, then you are going to love milkweed. That's because milkweed plants are magnets for monarch butterflies. Monarchs lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves and the caterpillars that hatch from them feast on the plants. Milkweed is the only food a monarch caterpillar will eat. They use the plant's toxin as a defense against predators that might try to make a snack of them. The monarch is immune to the toxin, which is why they can eat the plant. As they eat, the toxin is stored up in their bodies, making them taste bitter to predators. It's a pretty smart defense if you ask me. If you see a milkweed leaf with little bumps on its underside, leave it alone. Those will likely be monarch butterfly eggs. And of course, if you see a butterfly or caterpillar on a milkweed plant, leave them alone as well. Anyway, common milkweed grows over much of North America, and they love to grow in direct sunlight. Which means that you will most likely find them growing in open fields. Common milkweed has a single thick stalk that grows straight up and is around three to five feet tall at maturity. When the stalk is broken, you will see that it is hollow in the center. This is an important feature to remember. The leaves are oval and meaty with smooth margins and they always grow in pairs opposite each other from the stalk. Each pair is usually rotated 90 degrees from the pair above and below it. From mid to late summer, the common milkweed will flower. The flowers are quite unique in appearance and they grow in dense spherical clusters. The seed pods are equally as unique and they too develop during mid to late summer. The elongated seed pods are covered in soft projections. When the seed pods reach maturity, they will break open during autumn to release their downy seeds into the wind. Several parts of the common milkweed plant are edible when properly cooked. In the spring, the young shoots and leaves can be boiled. Later in the summer, the buds, flowers, and immature seed pods can also be cooked and eaten. For this episode, I will be focusing on the seed pods. When handling milkweed, make sure not to get the sap on or near your eyes. For this reason, it is a good idea to wash your hands immediately after handling milkweed or you might want to wear gloves while handling the plant. Only the immature seed pods can be eaten. That's because the silk inside a young pod is moist and tender enough to eat. But as the pod matures, the silk dries out and solidifies into fluff, making it too tough to eat. When picking the seed pods, I try not to pick anything that is over two inches long, but you can probably get away with anything up to three inches at most. When cooked, people will often extract the silk inside the young seed pods and use it to mimic the texture and appearance of melted cheese. You heard me right, the silk inside a seed pod can be used as a melted cheese substitute in different dishes. Before I get to cooking the seed pods, you should be aware that common milkweed can sometimes be mistaken for other species of plants that are not edible in any form. This is why it is always a good idea to thoroughly research each wild edible for yourself before handling it. Better yet, have a knowledgeable expert take you into the field and show you how to properly identify certain plants. My point is, just because you read about it online or see some guy on YouTube eating a certain wild edible, doesn't mean you should take them at their word alone. Anyway, the two plants that are most commonly mistaken for common milkweed are dogbane and butterflyweed. Both plants cannot be eaten under any set of circumstances, but don't let that scare you, because there are a few key features you can look for that will help you easily identify common milkweed apart from dogbane Let's start with dogbane. Dogbane and common milkweed are often confused in the spring when the plants are still young. At a quick glance, the shoots and leaves of both plants can look similar and both drip milky sap when injured. But here are three key differences. Number one, the stock of a common milkweed plant is hollow, whereas a dogbane stock, although soft, is solid. Number two, common milkweed and dogbane stocks and leaves may look similar near their bases, but there is an obvious difference further up the plant as it matures. Dogbane quickly branches out and the leaves often get smaller higher up the bush. However, common milkweed doesn't branch out and the leaves remain relatively the same size all the way up its single stock. And finally, number three, dogbane seed pods are long and slender, similar in shape to string beans. Common milkweed seed pods are much meatier and have a teardrop shape to them. Now on to butterflyweed. Butterflyweed belongs to the milkweed family, but as I stated before, it is not edible under any set of circumstances. Now, I don't have any footage of butterflyweed as I haven't found any in my area yet, but the described differences are easily noticeable anyway. Here are the two main ones. Number one, the flowers of the butterflyweed are red or orange, whereas the flowers of the common milkweed are light purple or sometimes light pink or even white. Number two, the sap of butterflyweed is clear, whereas common milkweed sap is milky. After confirming these plants as common milkweed, I harvested some of the younger seed pods. As I picked, I made sure to leave at least a couple pods on each milkweed plant. All the pods that you see here are between one and two inches long, a perfect size for cooking and eating. After taking the seed pods home, I started by rinsing them with water. Then I dumped them into a large pot of boiling water. The more water, the better. Remember, it is very important to boil the seed pods first in order to make them edible. I always boil common milkweed seed pods for eight to ten minutes with a pinch of salt thrown in. If you boil the pods for any longer than ten minutes, they will start to fall apart. After the boiling is finished, dump the water out. The pods are ready to eat. Their texture is unlike anything I've had before, which is why they are one of my favorite wild edibles, and they taste similar to asparagus or broccoli. Sometimes I eat the boiled pods as is, but this time I'm going to show you my favorite way of preparing them. I mix some butter and soy sauce together in a wok, and I threw the pods in to cook for a few minutes longer. The flavor is absorbed into the seed pods' silky center, which is why they are excellent in stir fries. There you have it, from seed pods to flavor pods in 15 minutes flat. Did you know that certain types of tree bark are edible? This knowledge could come in handy if you should find yourself in a survival situation. Stay tuned to learn more about tree cambium. During the spring and summer months, there are many wild edibles that one can choose from. When late autumn rolls around, the options begin to dwindle, and by the time winter hits, wild food sources become scarce. But even in the wintertime, nature provides an emergency food cache for those who really need it. To find these emergency caches, one doesn't need to look any further than the trees that surround them. This emergency food lays underneath the outer layer of bark in certain species of trees. Between the outer layer of bark and the actual wood of the tree is a thin layer of inner bark called cambium. The cambium layer is only a couple of millimeters thick, but it is packed with digestible starches, vitamins, minerals, and a little bit of sugar. Cambium also contains a large amount of fiber. Now, though all trees have cambium, not all cambium is edible. That's because some trees are known to be toxic for human consumption. Here are some species of trees that are generally safe to gather cambium from. Birch, willow, maple, spruce, pine, and fir. There are other trees out there that contain edible cambium, but those are the main ones. However, all the mentioned species of trees have multiple subspecies. For example, there are literally dozens of different kinds of pine, and so although most species of pine are edible, not all of them are. This is why it is extremely important that you thoroughly research the trees in your area to discover which ones are toxic for human consumption and which ones are good to gather from. Traditionally, pine is the most popular choice when it comes to harvesting cambium. Personally, pine is the only species that I've harvested cambium from, and I've only eaten cambium a few times in my life. Like I said before, cambium is classified as an emergency food. That's because removing the cambium layer will stunt the tree's growth at best, and can easily kill it at worst. The cambium is where the tree's nutrients are transported up from the roots and into the leaves, and so without the cambium, the tree will quickly starve. Since trees are such a slow-growing and valuable resource, the cambium should not be harvested under normal circumstances. It is just not worth harming or possibly killing a tree for a simple snack. So here are the only two circumstances that one should harvest cambium under. Number one, if a person finds themselves in a survival situation and they need something to eat. Number two, if the tree is already being harvested for firewood or lumber. Today I will be harvesting some pine cambium, and although I'm not in a survival situation, I will be returning to harvest this pine tree in the near future. I used my axe to carefully shave away the outer layer of bark, being very careful not to accidentally remove the delicate cambium layer. In a survival situation, it is better to remove small patches like this from several trees, rather than harvesting all the way around a single tree. A tree can recover from having a small patch of cambium removed, but it will die from having its cambium removed from all the way around. However, in a survival situation, it's best to harvest whatever is available. Human life takes precedence over trees. In the case that the tree will be harvested for materials anyway, you might as well harvest as much cambium as you possibly can from it. Now that the cambium layer is exposed, all I have to do is gently shave it from the tree. Cambium feels soft and a little gummy. It is also very easy to bend, and it is very easy to peel away from the tree after starting a cut. It might be hard to see in the video, but the wood of the tree is slightly more yellow in color than the whitish looking cambium. It's pretty easy to tell the difference between the two layers, since cambium is easy to peel away, but the wood itself will barely peel at all. In a survival situation, probably the best way to eat cambium is straight from the tree. From my experience, I find that pine cambium can vary slightly in taste and texture. Sometimes it's mild in flavor and easy to eat. Other times it can taste quite bitter and is a little harder to chew. I've noticed that cambium gathered in the dead of winter is likely to be the most pleasant and easy to eat, but since I haven't eaten much cambium myself, I can't confirm if that's generally the case for all cambium. But whether it tastes good or not, cambium contains a good amount of nutrients to keep you going if need be. You may want to chew the cambium to extract the nutrients and spit it out, or you may want to swallow the cambium to have something in your stomach. There are pros and cons for each, but if you want to cook the cambium, you can make a sort of tree pasta by tearing the cambium into strips so that they loosely resemble noodles, and boil them. Boiling the cambium will make it easier to eat, and a little more palatable to taste. When you're done eating your tree pasta, make sure to drink the water that they were boiled in as well. Pine cambium has also been collected, dried, and ground into flour. In countries like Sweden and Finland, this pine flour has been used to make pine bark bread for centuries. Today however, I'll be frying my cambium strips in olive oil with salt, until they turn brown and crunchy. I call them cambium chips, and they don't taste all that bad, but I'll give you a fair warning. Hot oil, especially over an open flame, can easily ignite. This would obviously destroy your precious batch of cambium in a heartbeat. Believe me, this has happened to me before, so be very careful. If you feel the pan is getting too hot, or if you see the oil smoking, you'll probably only have seconds to remove it from the flames before it ignites. Cambium chips definitely have a pine flavor to them, but if the batch of cambium is a mild one, the flavor mixes quite well with the oil and salt. It's an acquired taste for some, but I really like it. In the spring, shortly after the snow has melted away, fiddleheads begin to sprout from the ground. By their appearance, one can see why they are appropriately called fiddleheads, but what you're actually seeing here is an ostrich fern in its early stages. Fiddleheads grow fast, and before you know it, they will have unfurled into a fully mature three to four foot tall fern. At this stage, the ostrich fern becomes inedible, and so it is only in their fiddlehead form that they are good to eat. Fiddleheads grow in damp, even swampy soil, or in hardwood forests with rich soil. Although they are very easy to identify because of their unique appearance, there are several different species of fiddleheads, some of which are not edible, and so the species that I'm looking for today is of the ostrich fern variety. The good news is that it's easy to tell an ostrich fern fiddlehead apart from all the other inedible species. Once you've located a fiddlehead, there are three things you should look for to make sure it's the right kind. Number one, the fiddlehead should have bits of brown papery material on it that can easily be picked off. The second sign you need to look for is that the stem of the fiddlehead is both smooth and free of any hairs, and thirdly, the stem of the fiddlehead should have a deep u-shaped groove. These three signs indicate that you have an ostrich fern fiddlehead, which means it's safe to eat. However, they should not be consumed raw. You'll have to properly cook them first before eating them. Before I continue, I'd like to show you an example of a fiddlehead that's not good to eat. Notice how these are fiddleheads, but they are clearly not of the edible kind. Let me prove it to you by using the three identifiers that I just listed. First of all, these fiddleheads are absent of any brown papery material. Secondly, the stem is not smooth, but is covered in fibers. And thirdly, the stem has no hollow u-shape to it. Instead, it is completely round. This tells us that this is definitely not the plant we want. Okay, let's return to the patch of edible fiddleheads that I discovered. When picking fiddleheads, only gather the ones that are less than eight inches tall. If the fiddleheads are any taller, they are not good for eating. So when I pick fiddleheads, I usually play it safe and pick ones that are about five inches tall or shorter. Fiddleheads will grow in clusters, so when picking them, make sure to leave at least one or two of them behind so that the fern plant will remain healthy. After I picked what I needed, I brought them home to cook. I started by thoroughly washing the fiddleheads, making sure to remove all the papery material and any lingering bugs that may be hiding out. Then, I tossed them in a pot and boiled them for about seven minutes. After boiling the fiddleheads, I sauteed them in a frying pan with butter and garlic powder for a few minutes. And now, they are ready to enjoy. They have a pleasant flavor that is similar to a mild asparagus, and I love the texture of them. Although I've made teas from many different wild edibles throughout the years, I never got around to making pine needle tea until now. Pine needle tea is a very healthy drink, considering that a cup of pine tea contains five times the amount of vitamin C that is found in a lemon. Vitamin C, of course, is an antioxidant and an immune system booster. It also contributes to the health of the cardiovascular system, skin, and eyes. In addition to vitamin C, pine tea also contains loads of vitamin A, which benefits skin and hair regeneration, eyesight, and red blood cell production. Although pine needle tea has many health benefits, there are a couple cautions that I should share with you. First, pregnant women should not drink it. And secondly, although there are literally dozens of different species of pine trees that are good for making tea out of, there are three that are considered to be inedible. These three poisonous pines are the Norfolk Island Pine, Ponderosa Pine, and Yew. Although it is unlikely you will need to worry about these inedible species of pine, it is still important to do the proper research on anything before you ingest it. But now that we've got all of that out of the way, I decided that it was finally time to give pine needle tea a try. A good species of pine to start with is white pine. A white pine looks like your typical evergreen, with its needle-like foliage and pine cones. But a white pine tree has long green needles that grow in clusters of five. Here's what a cluster looks like. Again, notice that there are five needles. Here's what the bark of a white pine looks like. When I identified that this was in fact a stand of white pines, I pulled the pine needles apart into smaller pieces and added them to my mug. I also recommend bruising the needles between your hands or between two rocks. This will help to release the juices. When the water came to a boil, I added it to the needles in my mug. I set a lid on the mug and allowed the tea to steep for a few minutes. The reason why I didn't boil the needles in the water is because I didn't want to destroy the vitamin C that the needles contained. However, boiling doesn't affect vitamin A. After the tea had steeped for five minutes, I strained out the needles in a glass mug. I like using a clear mug when drinking wild teas because it allows me to view the color. You may notice that the pine tea is almost completely clear. It is hard to see on camera, but the tea only had a very slight green tint to it. Otherwise, it could be easily mistaken for plain water. This is normal for pine tea. For one reason or another, the green color of the needles doesn't leach very well into the water, but the flavor will still be there. It is time for a taste test. White pine needle tea is definitely one of the mildest teas that I've tasted. It does have a slight pine taste, but it wasn't as strong as I thought it would be. I also wondered if the tea would taste bitter, but I was surprised that it didn't. When winter came, I decided to make another batch of white pine tea. I decided to use less water and more needles to see if there would be much of a difference in the color and flavor. This time, I heated the water with the pine needles. However, I removed my mug from the fire once the water came to a boil. The tea was obviously a little murkier in color. When I tasted the tea, the only difference in flavor that I could detect was a slight bitterness that wasn't there before. Otherwise, it was still quite mild. So here's what I think of white pine tea overall. It's a healthy drink to boost the immune system and to fight off colds, but I don't really like how it tastes. Now don't get me wrong, it doesn't taste bad, but it doesn't really taste all that good either. But don't take my word for it, white pine needle tea is still definitely worth a try. Cattails are one of the most common wild edibles that can be found. If you can find water, whether it be a river, lake, pond, marsh, or even a patch of really moist soil, you will probably be able to find cattails there. If you live in the northern hemisphere, chances are cattails grow in your area. The unique features of the cattail plant make it easy to identify. Blade-like leaves that stand five to eight feet tall at maturity. And of course, its trademark cattail flower head situated on top of a central stem which can stand just as tall. A small handful of plants might have similar leaves. For example, some people might confuse young cattail leaves with those of the iris plant, which is toxic to ingest. But the cattail flower head is completely unique to the plant. So when you come across a patch of cattails, the best way to confirm them as such is to look for the cigar-like flower heads first. Different parts of the plant can be used for many different reasons, but today I'm going to focus on the tender stalk at the base of the cattail. But before I begin, I want to caution you. Although the cattail is edible, make sure that the water source you harvest it from isn't stagnant or polluted. The cattail is a wonderful plant that naturally cleans whatever water source it grows in. It does this by absorbing contaminants out of the water. Although this is a great feature, it is also the reason why it isn't good to eat cattails from a polluted area. For this reason, ditches and roadsides are never good places to harvest cattail from. Actually, that goes for any wild edible, but especially cattail. Okay, let's get to harvesting the stalks. Although this group of cattails doesn't have any visible flower heads, I have worked with cattails enough to make a confident idea of them without needing to see the flower head. Before picking your cattails, there are two observations you must make. Number one, you should only pick cattails in an area where there is an abundance of them. In many places across North America, cattails are being crowded out by an invasive species of wild grass known as phragmites. Therefore, if you are only able to locate a small cluster of cattails, it'd be best to give them a fighting chance by leaving them alone to grow and repopulate. Secondly, check with your local laws before harvesting. For example, in some states of the US, it is illegal to pick cattails. This is because they are listed as endangered in certain parts of the world due to the previously mentioned phragmites issue. However, if everything checks out, there is no reason why you can't enjoy this delicacy of nature for yourself. Cattails can be harvested from spring to fall. The roots, however, can be harvested all year round, including winter. But considering that I live in an area that receives copious amounts of snow in the wintertime, I imagine the roots would be pretty hard to reach while under a heavy layer of snow and ice. I start by cutting the roots from the base of the stalk. Later, in a different episode that is, I will extract the starch from them. Now, if I didn't intend to use the roots, I would have used a knife to cut the stalks away from the root system while they were in the water, in order to leave the roots intact, rather than pull the whole plant up like I did with these cattails. I then separate the leaves from around the stalk. As you can see, there is a clear slime that can be found underneath the leaves. Although it looks gross, this slime can be used as medicine. It is a natural antiseptic and analgesic. This means it can be used to keep wounds clean, while at the same time relieving pain and inflammation. For centuries, cattail jelly has been popular for treating and relieving sunburn, bug bites, toothaches, cuts, bruises, and more. Anyway, back to the task at hand. Most field guides suggest cutting the stalk at four inches, but you don't have to be strict with that number. As long as the stalk is tender, that's all that matters. The white part is obviously the most tender, so judging by that, I figured I could get away with cutting them at around six inches. Here is what the end of the stalk looks like. As you can see, it is made up of several different layers. I like to draw your attention to the core, which is sticking out slightly from the end of the stalk. This is what I will be eating. The outer layers are too fibrous to eat, but the core is tender enough to eat raw. Although I have eaten cattail shoots raw before, I like them best I figure that for a single serving, you will need to gather between 30 to 40 cattails. For this video, however, I gathered only 10 or so. It only took me a couple minutes to pick them, and about five minutes to process them. After washing the cores, I blanched them for a couple minutes in boiling water, before plunging them into cold water. I then fried them up in butter, with a little bit of salt and pepper to taste. The major nutrients of cattail shoots are manganese, vitamin K, magnesium, and iron. After frying them for two or three minutes, they were ready to eat. I have to say, this is my favorite way to eat cattail shoots. The cores are very easy to eat. Their texture is similar to that of an udon noodle, with a little crunch thrown in. I think this is the closest to pasta that a wild edible can get. What part of the cattail is your favorite to use? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for watching. In this episode, I make tea from four common species of evergreen trees. Which one is best? Stay tuned to find out. There are literally dozens of evergreen species that are good to make tea from. The four main groups, in my area at least, are pine, spruce, fir, and cedar. Within these four main groups of evergreen trees are many more subspecies. Although most types of evergreens are good to make tea from, there is a small number that are not good for human consumption. Therefore, it's important to familiarize yourself with the different types of evergreens that are in your area, so that you'll be able to make a positive ID. If you're not sure, then it's best to leave it alone. In addition, pregnant women should not drink any type of evergreen tea as a precaution. Now that we've gotten all that out of the way, it's time to dive in. Evergreen tea is an extremely rich source of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, starches, and sugars. And unlike most other wild edibles, the nutrients that evergreen trees provide are readily available all year round. Although I've made individual episodes before on white cedar and white pine tea, my goal in this episode is to compare the flavors between the four main species of evergreen. More specifically, white cedar, white spruce, balsam fir, and white pine. I will also examine the general characteristics of each tree to help identify them from each other. For starters, let's take a look at their bark. Next, let's look at the needles, which is what I'll be making the tea from. As you can see, white cedar needles can't really be considered needles at all. They're really a hybrid, not quite needles, but not quite leaves either. However, for the sake of this episode, I'll refer to them as needles. Notice how the cedar needles are made up of many scale-like sections that branch out from each other. Next on the list are white spruce needles. Of the four different species, they are the sharpest and most rigid. They are also short compared to a pine needle. Here are the needles of a balsam fir. At a quick glance, they look like spruce needles, but look closer and you'll easily be able to tell them apart. Although they are similar in length, the shape is different. The end of a fir needle is rounded, whereas a spruce needle comes to a sharp point. As well, a fir needle has only two sides, making it flat, whereas a spruce needle has four sides. A quick test that some people use to distinguish fir needles from spruce needles is to roll the needle between their fingers. A spruce needle will roll fairly easily, but a fir needle won't. After turning the fir needles over to view their undersides, you'll see that each needle has two distinct white stripes along its length. And finally, these are white pine needles, which are easily distinguished from all the rest. As you can see, they are much longer than spruce and fir needles. Another unique feature of pine needles is that they grow in clusters. I can tell this is a white pine specifically, because it has five needles within one cluster. Now, all the characteristics I just shared with you can be used to generally identify what main group an evergreen might belong to. However, there are other ways to further identify which subspecies each tree belongs to, and to avoid mistaking it for a toxic species. For example, although their bark patterns are quite distinct from each other, fir tree needles can sometimes be mistaken for yew needles, which are poisonous, yew being spelled Y-E-W. So researching the telltale differences between these two trees is a must. The good news is that with a little bit of education, the differences can be easily spotted. Anyway, after gathering some needles from each tree, I brought them home to conduct a flavor test. I placed the needles in their own jar. After boiling some water, I immediately filled each jar and allowed them to steep in the water for 15 minutes. Then I strained the needles out. Right away, I could see a difference between the teas. The cedar and fir teas had a green tinge to them, while the pine and spruce teas barely had any coloring to them at all. Although the coloring of the teas was subtle, their flavors weren't. Each tea was full of flavor, and had their own distinct taste. So here are my notes for each one. I liked the pine tea the least. It had a sharp, acidic flavor that I didn't really like. Neither did Mrs. Outsider. I would also describe it as being slightly bitter. The cedar tea was our favorite by far. It was smooth, with a slight sweetness that none of the other teas had. The only way I can describe its flavor is to compare it to a white tea, but there really is nothing like it. The spruce tea had a slightly fruity flavor to it. This might sound strange, but its flavor was similar to that of wine gum candies, if you know what those are. Finally, we tried the fir tea. This was my wife's second favorite. It tasted slightly flowery. That's honestly the best way I can describe it. Like an earthy flower. So there you go. Overall, I loved the cedar tea, I liked the spruce and fir, and I disliked the pine. But that's just my opinion. What do you think? Please share in the comments below. Hello fellow outsiders. I'm just walking in the bush really quietly today to see what I can see. I don't think you guys can hear it, but I can hear a turkey calling deeper into the bush that way. So I'm just being really quiet to see if I can get in without being detected. This is turkey season right now, so I'm probably going to see a few turkeys, and if I'm lucky I might even see some coyotes trying to hunt them. So that'd be a real treat. But now is the time of year when the yellow birch sap is starting to flow, and the yellow birch sap flows right after the maple sap is done flowing. Maple sap flows ideally when the day is about five degrees above zero during the day, and then during night minus five. But yellow birch trees, the sap flows best when the temperature is around 50 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, and I think that equals to 16 degrees Celsius. But anyways, I'm just going to check some yellow birch trees here and see how the sap is flowing, and if I can I would like to collect some yellow birch sap. So here goes nothing. So this is a yellow birch tree, and it looks pretty scraggly. That's how you can tell it's a yellow birch is because the bark peels and kind of tatters like this. A white birch, the bark is a lot whiter and it peels more in sheets. And with a yellow birch, when the sun hits it just right, there's kind of this golden sheen that comes off the bark. I don't know if you can see it on the camera here, but it's got a bit of a yellowish goldish tinge to it. That's how you know you've got a yellow birch. So I'm just going to take the tip of my knife here, and I'm going to tap it into the tree just a little bit and see if there's any sap flowing. And as you can see, it's flowing pretty good. So I'm going to see if I can start collecting some now. So what I've got in here is a hardwood branch that I'm going to carve into a bit of a spile that I'm going to use to collect the yellow birch sap into a container. I don't know if you can see it, but I've whittled this stick flat with my knife, and in the very center you can see there's kind of a softer part of the wood here. And so I'm going to make this into a spile that I can use to tap the yellow sap. And so I'm just going to take the tip of my knife and just push out the softer wood from the center, and that'll be a channel for the yellow sap to flow in into the bottle that I have set up for it. Okay, so I've got my spile made up here, and I'm just going to make the initial entry into the bark with my knife, and then I'm going to tap the spile into the hole there and let it start dripping. Okay, this tree has a good drip, so this will be a good one to put my spile into. The intrusion that my knife makes into the birch is so minimal that it being hailed as the new super drink. That's because it's packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, electrolytes, and natural sugars. Birch sap is said to boost the immune system, lower cholesterol, detoxify the body, and it is even thought to have anti-aging properties. The sap also contains the chemical xylitol, a naturally occurring sugar alcohol, which the American Dental Association says helps fight tooth decay. Birch sap is marketed not only as a health drink, but also as a beauty product. In some parts of the world, birch sap is so popular that I've heard it can sell for up to twenty dollars a liter, but nature has it on tap for free. Now this is the second drip that I've set up, so between the two spiles that I have here, I should have something to drink fairly quickly, which I'm looking very much forward to. Yellow birch sap and, well, also sweet birch or black birch has oil of wintergreen right in the sap, so if you chew on the twigs or boil the twigs to make some tea, which I've done before in previous episodes, it'll have a slight hint of wintergreen flavor to it, which is really pleasant. But anyways, now that the second one is ready to go, then I can leave both of them to drip for a while and I'll return soon. It's been about two hours now and yeah, so let's take a look. Okay, so this one's still dripping a little bit, but I've only collected a little bit of sap in there, so I'm just going to take this off the tree now and go on to the next one and see how much I've collected there. So again, I've only had these dripping for two hours and I have almost half a water bottle here and this tree was dripping a little slower obviously, so less, but still a little bit. Notice that this one here is a little more cloudy than the one off the tree that was dripping faster, so I don't know if this sap is starting to, the sugars are starting to break down already, but I'll try them separately and see if there's a difference in flavor. Something that I forgot to mention earlier was that yellow birch sap flows for only two to three weeks, so it's much shorter than the maple sap season because on the maple trees the sap flows for, I think it's around four to six weeks, so a much faster period. So you have to get the yellow birch trees when the time is right and I just so happened to get them in the right time. Definitely refreshing. It has a slight yellow tinge to it, but not much, and it's actually quite cold too, which is nice. A lot of people assume that maple sap and yellow birch sap will have a really sweet and sticky kind of flavor to it, but actually both saps are, they taste a lot like water because they haven't been boiled down yet to where the sugar content is higher. So with yellow birch sap you get maybe a hint of wintergreen flavor, but not much, and the same thing with maple sap is you get just a hint of the maple flavor, but it's hard to distinguish. It does taste a lot like water, but the fact of the matter is that this stuff is really, really refreshing, and of course you can't deny all the health benefits that come with drinking this stuff. So all in all, really refreshing, really healthy. And this, my friend, is the taste of spring.